I wrote this statement in 2010. Nothing has changed. I am using this ‘credo’ as the basis of my new ‘great leap forward’ with the Thames art and technology idea.. Delineation of ‘Theory’: An artist’s personal statement Throughout my ‘art-working’ life some things have remained stubbornly, one might even say obsessively’, constant. Be it…
poetry research
Back on TRACK? : Oxford and Nottingham
Back in 2010 I started off with the title Track for a multimedia M.A. that finally did not happen. However the seeds of some kind of project centred around the impact of the railway on the movement of people and ideas started then. This is now bearing fruit as a double project centred on my…
Lost Nottingham: Paper Boats on Private Road
PAPER BOATS ON PRIVATE ROAD A lone slim figure in Sunday best gets off the tram on Woodborough Road, Hesitates then proceeds down Private Road until it dog-legs east at his destination As he turns along the high brick wall he hears children’s laughter, a maid calling He stands at the gate hidden by trees and calls, the maid comes to…
Lost Nottingham: Picasso’s Peace Train
PICASSO’S PEACE TRAIN The black clouds had been building up all week Thunder rolling down from the Peaks on Nottingham, Grey drizzle trickling from the glass roof at Marylebone Station Dripped on to Pablo Picasso’s neck as he boarded the train to Sheffield Monday 13th November 1950 early morning the train’s steam billowed Through…
Lost Nottingham: Charlie and the Lace Factory
CHARLIE AND THE LACE FACTORY Monday 4th May 1904, Grand Theatre Radford Road, Hyson Green Evening performance of Sherlock Holmes over, Charles Chaplin aged 15 Collar askew from a swift costume change leaves Billie the page boy behind And cheekily slaps the final drop curtain just below King Charles head The sun-light overhead…
Edwin Smith revisited – Catching Light
Back in October 2014 (now three years ago) I was on the first term of a Creative Writing M.A. at NTU. I was also with uncanny timing commissioned (the first and so far the only time I been commissioned) by R.I.B.A. through Apple and Snakes to write in response to a lovely collection of Edwin…
Contemporary American Poetry – 55 years on
Picked this up in a second hand shop recently. Was first edition (1962) of a book I had encountered in a travelling shelf of ‘American Poetry’ in my local Didcot library in 1981 when I had returned home after art college. It (in the flag cover version below) and a book of William Carlos Williams…